but it doesn't follow from this that Curie's contemporaries would feel obliged to praise her scholarship even though they didn't think that much of it simply because she was a woman.

PC was already in effect in the late nineteenth century. When people said politically incorrect things, they were conscious of transgressing.

This is a time when the Royal Institute could refuse to let her give a talk simply on the grounds that she was a woman.

Really?

They said that was the grounds? Actually said such an unspeakable thing out loud? I find that mighty hard to believe.

Sounds mighty like the story that Tully was lynched for whistling at a white woman.

Now possibly the real reason that they did not have her give a talk was that she was woman, but no one would have dared say out loud "because she is a woman"